Best Little Horror House in Langley Falls
"Best Little Horror House in Langley Falls" is the Halloween episode of the FOX animated comedy series Ironically, it originally aired a full week after Halloween. Plot After years of hosting the scariest haunted house in the neighborhood for years, Stan Smith finds himself outdone by his neighbor Buckle. Francine makes things worse when she finds herself returning and declares that it is impossible to beat him. Depressed, Stan goes to Roger for advice and Roger suggests he use his CIA influence to get real body parts and instruments. Stan decides to pull in five of the most dangerous serial killers in the area. However, the killers sitting in their cell fail to scare anyone so Roger tries to make them scarier. First he gets them riled up and horny (by ripping off Francine's costume in front of them, leaving her in her bra and panties for the rest of the episode) and then he turns them loose; forcing Stan, Francine, Roger and Klaus to hide in the kitchen. Stan uses Roger to block the door from opening. While everyone is trapped in the kitchen, Francine apologizes to Stan for not being supportive of his haunted house. Meanwhile, Steve, Barry and Snot arrive at Toshi's house to go trick or treating, but find Toshi refuses to wear the Samurai costume his mother got him. Mrs. Yoshida asks Steve if they would mind taking Akiko (dressed as from ) with them and Steve is smitten. Toshi allows them to go out with the condition that they have Akiko back by sundown. Steve inadverdently keeps her out late and when they find out Toshi is looking for them they flee to the Langley Falls. Taking refuge in a cave under the falls, Steve starts to move in on Akiko until Toshi bursts in wearing full Samurai garb and chases him to Vince Chung's Halloween party where he tells Toshi he is smothering his sister. Toshi agrees and leaves them together where Akiko admits she has a crush on another, younger boy named Doug. As the serial killers burst into the kitchen, Stan and others flee through the woods to a locked factory, where they are rescued when Toshi arrives and kills all the serial killers with his katana, leaving Roger to take home one of the killers' heads. Reception The episode was watched by 6.30 million viewers in its original airing, according to Nielsen ratings, despite being aired simultaneously as on ABC, The Amazing Race on and Sunday Night Football on . The episode also acquired a 2.9 rating in the 18–49 demographic, finishing fourth in its timeslot. In total viewership, the episode was up 17.5% from the show's previous episode, "Son of Stan", which had a viewership of 5.36 million. The episode received generally positive reviews from television critics. Jason Hughes of TV Squad wrote a mixed review of the episode and noted that "they should have kept the focus more completely on the holiday, though maybe Seth MacFarlane was worried he'd said about all he could about Halloween in three back-to-back episodes." Hughes compared the episode to "horror movies of the old" and said that the episode's "imagination is far better than anything that can be seen on television." In a simultaneous review of the episodes of , and Family Guy that preceded the episode, Todd VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club wrote: "As always, it fell to American Dad to try to prop up the rest of the night, and fortunately, the episode was capable of doing so. ... This wasn't the strongest American Dad ever, but it had some very funny bits and a coherent storyline that didn't try too hard to shock." He gave the episode a B+, the highest grade of the night, higher than The Cleveland Show episode "It's the Great Pancake, Cleveland Brown", The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror XXI", and Family Guy episode "Halloween on Spooner Street". References External links * Category:20th Century Fox Category:Episodes Category:Originally aired on FOX Category:2010 releases